[Music]
[Applause]
hi everyone
today i'm going to show you how my
roommates and i run our thrifting
instagram business
[Music]
so we started our business empire state
thrift
about two and a half months ago it's an
instagram page where
we sell vintage pre-owned
and thrifted clothing on the instagram
platform to people all around the
country
we started it because last fall my
roommate kimmy
wanted to start a closet on instagram
where she was selling some of her
old clothes that she had in her closet
that she wanted to get rid of she wasn't
having much luck on like poshmark
so she posted a few clothes but
didn't really get that into it and then
kind of forgot about it and then
in february she was like i want to start
trying to sell my clothes again
and i had kind of gotten into um
instagram closets so i was like oh
that's such a great idea maybe i could
put some of my clothes
on it too so we got together some
clothes that we didn't want anymore
and took some pictures of them and
posted them and
people we didn't know started buying
them and we were like oh
so this is actually something that we
can do we can make a business out of
this
and let me tell you the instagram closet
world is
massive there are so many people who buy
and sell clothes
on instagram so then my other roommate
maggie
she was living in rhode island and she
was finally coming back to new york so
that same weekend we posted
our first drop she came back and wanted
to get involved too so that's kind of
how the whole business was formed
that's just a little um little back
story on empire state thrift
i thought i would show you guys how we
run it on a weekly basis
and what we do to post our items so i
guess i will go
step by step on how we run our business
on a weekly basis
so the first step is to
get clothes obviously we have gotten our
clothes from
our own closets we go thrifting like
every other week
my grandpa has sent me clothes my
boyfriend has given us clothes we have a
lot of different
sources where we've been getting clothes
from so we have our clothes
step two we pick a theme so usually
every sunday
we pick a theme for the week we like to
sell our clothes in themed
drops so our drops usually happen every
thursday or friday
they're all themed so our first drop i
think was called
cloudy skies drop we've done a wintry
mix drop
we've done a spring fever drop just kind
of a theme that everything fits into so
it's more exciting for the people who
buy clothes and
um just more consistent you know what
you're getting into when we announce the
drop
so we pick the clothes for the drop
usually we do
between six and 12 items it just depends
but consistently we've been doing about
nine so we pick all of the clothes
and we pick a theme bookmark that and
get ready for the week the next step
step
three i think is we start to get our
branding together
so the way we like to announce our drops
for the week is we post two aesthetic
pictures
and then we announce the drop directly
on our feed so we pretty much only use
our feed for posting items we're selling
and announcing drops everything else
that's promotional or anything like that
we do in our stories
we will pick two aesthetic pictures that
go with the drop
we'll usually post the first one on
monday around 7pm
the second one on tuesday around noon
and then we'll post a picture of all the
clothes laid out
on tuesday around 7pm and we'll announce
the name of the drop the time of the
drop the date of the drop
and sometimes we do a giveaway or
something like that
that's just fun we say comment your
favorite item for a chance to get two
dollars off we gave away
a starbucks gift card when we did a
coffee drop sometimes these days vary
um if we do a friday drop it all gets
pushed back a day but
we went to fridays now we're back on
thursdays we're trying it out and these
aesthetic images we pick yeah just kind
of go
with the theme of what the drop is so
when we did the coffee drop we posted
an aesthetic picture of a coffee shop
and some coffee mugs it's just kind of
our
own unique way of announcing what we're
doing and then usually we'll put it on
our story a video
of the layout of the clothing with a
countdown on it like an instagram
countdown so people can turn on
reminders if they're excited for the
draw
so step four is then we have to
actually take pictures of the clothes so
some thrifting and closet instagrams
like to just lay the clothes out
on the floor or they have a hanger they
put it on
they do it that way but we personally
like to model the clothing so you can
kind of see how it fits on an
actual person my two roommates and i we
all have pretty different body types and
heights
so it's really nice that we can get a
broad range of
sizes and different kinds of clothing
that we can really cater to
a lot of different kinds of people and
personally i
just like seeing clothes modeled on
someone before i buy them i like to see
how it fits on them
we do it from the neck down so you never
see our faces
and we usually try to take it from a few
different angles
we have a pretty big setup for that
my boyfriend is currently living with us
he's a photographer
so he has backdrops and really nice
lights
so we use a lot of his equipment to take
the pictures
but he's only living with us for a
little bit so when he moves out we're
gonna
have to find our own lighting
so we use those so everything looks
really nice and professional and so we
take
pictures of us modeling all the clothes
we make sure to take a boomerang
of each item of clothing as well because
we post those boomerangs to the story
once we take all the pictures of us
actually in it
then we hang up the clothes and hang it
on the backdrop
and we take a hanging picture in case
people do prefer to look at the hanging
pictures of the clothes
and then for our personal reference we
take a picture of the tag so when we're
going through the pictures later we know
the brand and the size
next step is then we will
all sit down and we have an apple tv so
we'll airplay our phone to the tv so we
can all see the pictures on a baker's
screen
usually we have one person going through
their phone
going through the pictures on the tv and
another person on the notes app on their
phone
so we sit and we go through all the
pictures we favorite all of the pictures
that we want to post then we
name the item so it's like a levi's 505
jean
then we do a little description you know
perfect for
spring just a little blurb about it we
note if there's any
you know rips or marks or anything wrong
with it
and then we put the brand and the size
sometimes we put measurements if it's
something more specific like
a pair of jeans and then we do the bid
price and the
bin price so the way we run our
is we do it as a bidding system so
we might start the bid at 10 but the bin
is 35.
bin means buy it now that is a very big
term
in the closet thrifting instagram world
so the way we run our instagram
is we set the bid price
and people can make those bids but if
you
get an item at bid price you have to pay
shipping the bin
price includes shipping people can keep
out bidding each other
until someone might bin it if you really
want the item and you don't want anyone
else to take it then you just pay the
higher amount of money buy it now
it's yours so yeah we established those
prices
and it's all in the notes app so we have
it
for the day of the drop and we can make
drafts in our instagram so once we go
through all of these items
make all the descriptions and put the
brands and
the prices and everything in we pick the
front-facing pictures so the pictures
that are going to be the first one on
the post
and we put a filter on them it doesn't
really edit them that much you
honestly can barely even tell but it's
just for a feed thing just so our feed
looks nice so we usually put the edited
picture first
and then we put the unedited picture
second so you can see that in case it
alters the color
at all usually it doesn't but just in
case so we have it there
and once we edit it then we put it into
a feed preview app
and we organize the pictures all around
to see
what layout looks best on our feed and
then once we get that we take a
screenshot of it
to make sure we remember the order of it
so
then after that usually we draft the
instagram posts
so they're all just in our instagram we
can just post them when it's time for
the drop
so then the next step is using those
promotional boomerangs and pictures that
we took
when we took pictures of the entire drop
we will post those
usually the day of and sometimes the
night before the drop we'll start
posting the boomerangs with the polls on
it
we'll post the countdowns just getting
people excited for the drop so we'll
post all of those boomerangs and
pictures get people excited
get people interested kind of start to
feel out what items might go what items
might not
some items we will post and be like
these are so cute
people will love these and then we'll
post it and
no one will buy it and then we're sad
so then after that next step is the
actual drop
we always post at 7 pm eastern standard
time
post all the items and the way our
bidding works is you have 24 hours after
the item is posted so all bids will end
friday at 7 p.m or saturday if it's on
friday
24 hours after we post vids end we will
for the next day
kind of watch the drop respond to
comments
if someone is outbid we'll make sure to
tell them we'll put on our story if a
bit is started on an item
next step is once all the bids end the
24 hours after we post the drop
we will message everyone who won the bid
on the item so they had the highest bid
at 7pm the next day
we will message all of them and tell
them their
price and how much they need to pay us
we give them about four hours to pay us
usually we try to send orders out
between the next one or two days
so we have mailer bags and we have our
own stickers
made by our friend ecob shop
she has her own youtube channel and etsy
shop she made us custom stickers for
our small business check her out and we
have our own business cards we got
through canva
we will package our orders we'll sit
down we have a big spreadsheet that we
made
of just every single thing we have every
single time we go thrifting
i will enter into the spreadsheet
everything we bought how much we bought
it for just so we have
all of those expenses and numbers
somewhere so we know
how much we're spending how much we are
making so i will go into the spreadsheet
and i will find all the items that we
sold and i will put it into our sold
tab on our spreadsheet i'll put how much
they paid for it how much
shipping they paid for it and then how
much the actual shipping was
and i'll fill up that whole spreadsheet
so we can just keep all of our numbers
so
we're filling that out while we're
packaging orders we do all of our labels
through pirate ship
it's a service where you can print
pre-made labels so we don't have to
lend the post office get away there pay
there we can just
get everything printed and drop it off
at the post office since we're going
every single week to drop off packages
we don't have time to wait in a line the
way we package our orders is we'll wrap
it in tissue paper and then we'll close
it with our
custom-made sticker and then we'll put
our business card inside of it too and
then we'll put it in the mailer
seal it up that's just like a big part
of it making sure people know that you
you care about them and you put time
into sending things and you aren't just
sending them like a crumpled up t-shirt
that's all wrinkled it's folded nice and
you know the effort's there either that
saturday or monday we will take to the
post office
and just drop it off we only live a few
blocks away from
a post office so it's pretty easy to
just bring it over there and drop it off
we had some beef with another post
office i had a really long line but we
found out that there's another one near
us
has a drop off it's all good and then
yeah we send it out and then we get
ready for the next week that's kind of
how we run
our thrifting instagram it's been a fun
way for us to
feed our shopping addiction and also
just like have a hobby i feel like
recently people ask me what my hobbies
are and like i don't even know anymore
so yeah it's empire state thrift if you
want to follow it if you have any
questions if you're interested in
starting your own thrifting business
let me know i'll give you the real the
real dirt well i kind of already did but
i
just let me know i'm excited to throw a
little bit of it into my videos and show
you guys what we're up to um
okay well that is all i have for you
guys so i will talk to you later
thanks for watching this video let me
know if you want any
help with your clothing instagram
business or
if you have any questions about ours
everything that's available
on our instagram is under the hashtag
empire state thrift available
it's in our bio so anything that hasn't
sold from any of our past
drops is on that hashtag and it is still
available to purchase
so if you go on there dm us about it or
comment on the item
you can still buy it and we still have a
lot of cute stuff that we haven't sold
yet so
check it out all right i will talk to
you guys later thank you for watching
bye
you